Lay Minister Sarah Farrow, 17 May

I spent 13 years of my life, all of my school years, at a Quaker School in New Jersey. You may be familiar with the Quakers – their real name is the ‘Society of Friends’ – but like many Christian denominations, their more familiar title of ‘Quaker’ originates from a pejorative reference to their non-conformist ways. I loved my time at my Friends School. We were sometimes teased by other kids who would snidely say – so, I guess you’re all best friends, huh? And at the time, being kids, we immediately thought, ‘no, we’re not all friends… I mean, I don’t hang out with Suzie over there…’ And reading today’s Gospel and thinking about this different meaning of ‘friend’, these thoughts about my time at the Friends school came back to me. And you know what, we can really learn a lot from those Quakers. Whether we realised it or not at the time, we really were all friends. We may not have all liked each other, we may not have all shared the same taste in music or shared the same opinions but as I hope to explain this morning, we were all friends and we all loved each other in the way that today’s Gospel teaches.

Jesus’ commandment in the Gospel is not just to ‘love one another’, but his words were for us to ‘love one another as I have loved you’! And Jesus goes on to say ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’ And at that point, one can almost hear a few of the disciples probably thinking ‘whoa! Wait a minute, I didn’t sign up for this!’ And indeed, many of us may be thinking that right now. Not only have we been commanded to love one another, but to lay down our lives for each other! There is a lot to take in upon hearing this commandment of Christ, and it is not one to take lightly. Let us first think about this love that is described. There are many different types of love – romantic love, family love, platonic love, a love for a particular interest or passion. And then there is charitable love.  The love that is given with no expected return. The love that is given to one that is not able to give back. As one Pastor has put it: this love is ‘like grace, a free gift for others which is underserved or unmerited – a free gift for those in need.’ The same love God has shown us.

We may often think of love as something that has some kind of return. We might love someone with the expectation that they will love us back, or we might love a certain book because of the enjoyment it gives us when reading it. But this charitable love is one that comes with no expectations, one that is truly unconditional. And one that we can only give to others because this love has been given to us first by God through his Son, Jesus Christ.

Now let us go back and look at the use of the word ‘friend’. How can we all be friends if we don’t even know each other? How can we all be friends if we don’t even all like each other? Well, this isn’t about liking or getting along, this is a friendship that goes much deeper than that. This is a fellowship, a community, a friendship in Christ. We are friends in that we are equals who have a commandment, a solemn obligation, to look out for each other’s good. It’s not a commandment to like each other, but a commandment to love each other, to be aware of each other’s needs. And sometimes our neighbour’s need may force us to put our own needs to one side.

We may remember the Gospel message that death to self is at the heart of being a disciple of Christ. That there will be times when we will be taken out of our current way of life, when we will have to do what we don’t necessarily want to do, we will have to put our own lives to one side so that we can truly follow Christ and love one another as he has loved us. We will have to lay down our lives for our friends. We will have to put ourselves out there in order to help our neighbour in need.

But – and this is a big but- we do not do this alone! We do none of this alone. The Holy Spirit is among us and it is he who strengthens us, stirs us, and comforts us to go forward with Jesus’ commandments! On our own, we are not capable of such unconditional love and friendship. It is the Holy Spirit that works through us. As we approach Pentecost, this Sunday’s readings give us a foretaste of what we will be celebrating on that last Sunday in May. And it reminds us, that we can celebrate the presence of the Holy Spirit everyday! Not just on Pentecost do we thank God for His gift of the Holy Spirit so that we might be able to fulfil these commandments. Once again we see that God has given us what we need, even though we still do not realise how much we need it!

In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear of the power of the Holy Spirit in the story of Peter and Cornelius. Peter preaches to both the circumcised believers and the Gentiles and low and behold – ‘the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.’ Shock, horror – even the Gentiles! The Gentiles, who were seen as foreigners, outsiders, not from the nation of Israel and therefore not ‘meant’ for the Word of God as the disciples had believed. But still, God had spoken to Cornelius, a Gentile, telling him to seek out Peter and God commanded Peter to go to these Gentiles and preach the Word.  And was it because Peter was such a phenomenal speaker that he could convert these people? Was it because he was a wordsmith of the highest degree that they began extolling God? No, because Peter does not own his words when he preaches the Word of God. Peter could not give the Holy Spirit himself, but instead the Holy Spirit was being given along with the Word.

This passage makes me think of words of wisdom I have received from two very wise women. The first one was said to me right before my first time preaching in public and I was very nervous.

I was told that there was no reason to worry that I would mess up – the Holy Spirit wouldn’t let me because, after all, the Holy Spirit was leading me and giving me the words. Again, these words are not my own. The words I speak cannot reach you without the Holy Spirit. The words I speak are meaningless without the Holy Spirit.

The second set of wise words came from my mother. She always said, ‘You have to put yourself in the way of the Holy Spirit.’ Meaning that we don’t just sit at home waiting for the Holy Spirit to hit us, we need to put our own effort in – we need to hear the Word of God, because that is how the Holy Spirit reaches us – through the Word. These are two very wise women who saw that, as Luther said ‘it is the Holy Spirit who calls us through the Gospel to Christ and preserves us in truth.’ The Holy Spirit works through us – we don’t work the Holy Spirit. Even John writes about the Holy Spirit’s work in the second reading when he writes: ‘the Spirit is the one that testifies because the Spirit is the truth.

Today’s readings are joined by many common themes, but one that stands out to me today is that they all speak of our relationship to each other and how we should treat each other. But they also all remind us that we can only do this with the Holy Spirit. We are about to say the Creed and there in the Third Article of the Creed we will say how the Holy Spirit affects our being made holy, through things outside of ourselves, through the external marks of the church  – Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, Holy Absolution and the Holy Gospel.

Looking around this church and seeing how far away some of us have come from, it is amazing to think that the Holy Spirit has fallen on all of us! And because of this, we are friends in Christ, a much deeper friendship then any other relationship we may have. A true love and faith friendship where when we share the Word of God, when we show love and love one another, we do not do so for our own sake, but as part of a larger community of friends. And we do not do so out of our own doing, but by the workings of the Holy Spirit! So as we greet our friends in Christ around the world in hundreds of languages, as we welcome newcomers to the Word, as we help our neighbour in need and share the knowledge of the love of God we see the Holy Spirit at work and we can sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things!